When Patrick Mahomes hit Travis Kelce for a 25-yard gain with three seconds remaining in the fourth quarter to set up the Chiefs’ game-tying field goal on Sunday night, it looked like the kind of well-executed offensive play that comes from years of practice. Instead, it was something Mahomes and Kelce decided on the fly.
Just before that play, the Chiefs called a timeout and then the Bills called another timeout, and during that time, Kelce said he told Mahomes that he knew where there would be an opening in the defense and he’d run there, rather than running the specific route for the play that was called.
“I told him, ‘I’m probably not going to run the route that’s called, I’m just going to run to the open area,'” Kelce said after the game. “And probably midway through his cadence he was screaming at me at the line of scrimmage, ‘Do it! Do it!’ And I was just like, ‘OK, here we go, boys.'”
Mahomes confirmed that they didn’t do it the way the playbook drew it up, and instead adjusted in the moment.
“The play to Travis, he wasn’t necessarily supposed to do that, but after the timeout we got a look at what the defense was doing, and he said it to me, ‘If they do it again, I’m going to take it up the middle between both the guys guarding me,'” Mahomes said. “He went up the field, I gave him the ball, and he got into field goal range.”
Mahomes and Kelce work well enough together that even if they’re drawing up a play in the dirt, the play is probably going to work.